VMworld 2014 Day 2 Keynote
Published on 26 Aug 2014 · Filed in Liveblog · 1969 words (estimated 10 minutes to read)This is a semi-liveblog of the day 2 keynote at VMworld 2014 in San Francisco.
Ben Fathi, CTO of VMware, takes the stage to start the keynote, and goes through a recap of yesterday’s announcements: EVO and EVO:RAIL, vCloud Air rebranding and the availability of new services, VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), and new product versions (vCloud Suite 5.8, betas of vSphere and VSAN).
Fathi re-emphasizes that VMware’s SDDC vision is an architecture, one built on the “power of AND.” vCloud Suite (and vCloud Air) is a manifestation of the SDDC vision/architecture. VMware’s SDDC vision/architecture delivers the power of “AND.”
Fathi transfers the baton to Sanjay Poonen, EVP for End-User Computing at VMware. Poonen is a high-energy speaker, and his enthusiasm for end-user computing is clear (and contagious). The world of end-user computing is changing; not only users are changing, but also apps and data are changing. Poonen talks about VMware’s EUC vision: enabling users to work “at the speed of life.” Today’s environments are far more heterogenous than in the past. Poonen uses an example of a rooftop infinity pool in Singapore as a metaphor for the “three foundations” of EUC: SDDC, workspace services (authentication and content collaboration, for example), and then the desktop/mobile/cloud experience.
Poonen goes on to talk about VMware’s desktop leadership. Horizon delivers a unified application publishing and VDI solution. Next is Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), via Desktone, and Poonen mentions DaaS via vCloud Air. Next Poonen talks about real-time application delivery via the CloudVolumes acquisition. Finally, Poonen discusses the rich user experience, and he announces a partnership between Google, NVIDIA, and VMware, and rolls into a video about the results of the partnership. The partnership enables users of VMware Horizon View on VMware vSphere on next-generation Google Chromebooks to utilize massively graphics-intensive applications with outstanding performance. (This is a pretty cool announcement, IMHO.)
The second major pillar that Poonen discusses is enterprise mobility management. It’s not just about application management, but also about content management, email management, and device management. Poonen brings onto stage Kevin Ichhpurani from SAP, to discuss a partnership between VMware and SAP. The partnership brings together AirWatch and SAP Secure Mobile for the secure delivery of applications to mobile devices.
The third major pillar that Poonen discusses is content collaboration. This means “anytime/anywhere” access, hybrid deployment, enterprise-grade functionality/support. Poonen talks about how United Airlines is transforming their operations uses mobile devices (supported by Apple devices and AirWatch by VMware). Poonen talks about all the integrations that are present: integrations between SDDC and workspace services, integration between desktop services and content collaboration. Poonen revisits the VMware Workspace Suite announcement from yesterday, drawing a comparison between vCloud Suite for SDDC and the Workspace Suite for EUC.
Poonen mentions that VMware is being designated as the leader by GigaOm and Radicati Group.
At this point, Poonen brings out Kit Colbert, CTO for EUC at VMware. Colbert is well-known to the VMworld crowd and is a veteran at VMware. Colbert starts his discussion using the idea of a “mobile cloud architecture” as the basis for the discussion. Colbert starts the first demo of the day by framing the demo around the concept of a doctor moving through various devices and applications over the course of a day. The demo spans a Mac in the doctor’s office, an iPad that he carries with him, and a thin client leveraging rich 3D graphics functionality. AirWatch Secure Content Locker facilitates some fictional collaboration between Colbert and Poonen (who is also a doctor in this example) across different security zones. The summary of the demo is that all the applications were in one place, data followed the user, and 3D images were available on any device.
Next Colbert takes the audience into a demo of CloudVolumes, and how CloudVolumes makes application delivery fast and seamless (like provisioning applications via AirWatch to a mobile device). In the demo, Colbert provisions Office to a VDI desktop almost instantaneously.
Application delivery is important, but desktop delivery and desktop provisioning is also important. Colbert next dives into more detail on Project Fargo, which enables vastly faster provisioning of virtual desktops by via cloning process. The clone is very lightweight because it shares not only disk but also memory with the original. Colbert begins to tie things today: VMware uses Project Fargo to quickly clone the desktop, and then use CloudVolumes to attach applications to that desktop. When the desktop is no longer needed, the desktop is discarded. This radically simplifies the administration and management of desktops and applications. Colbert name-drops a new project name—Project Meteor—but doesn’t go into great level of detail on exactly what Meteor encompasses.
Poonen and Colbert turn the stage over to Raghu Raghuram, who heads up VMware’s SDDC efforts. Raghuram reviews the achievements of the core components of the SDDC architecture—compute (via vSphere, including the vSphere 6.0 beta announced yesterday), storage (via VSAN), networking (via NSX—go VCDX-NV!), and management (via the newly-rebranded vRealize suite). Once again, Raghuram talks about SDDC as “the power of AND”.
Raghuram next transitions into a review of the “three paths” to SDDC that were introduced by Gelsinger yesterday: build your own, converged infrastructure, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Naturally, this leads to a discussion of the EVO family, especially EVO:RAIL. Fathi takes the stage again and prompts Raghuram into discussing how quickly EVO:RAIL can be turned up (up and running in 15 minutes, scales up to 100 VMs or 250 desktop VMs, supports non-disruptive upgrades), and that leads into a demo of EVO:RAIL. The hardware specification for EVO:RAIL is a 2U, four-node enclosure (think Dell C6100 or similar hardware form factor). EVO:RAIL building blocks will automatically discover each other, allowing users to easily build 16 node clusters (four EVO:RAIL blocks). EVO:RAIL also offers a greatly simplified web-based UI, although the vSphere Web Client is still available for use. EVO:RAIL includes vSphere and VSAN, and includes Log Insight as well.
EVO:RACK is a larger-scale implementation that builds on EVO:RAIL and includes all of the vCloud Suite. It starts at half a rack, and scales to multiple racks (no mention I caught of exactly how many racks). VMware is shooting for being up and running deploying applications in less than 2 hours for EVO:RACK. EVO:RACK, of course, is still in technical preview.
Next Raghuram moves onto talking about VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), which was announced yesterday as being available in beta. Over the next few minutes he discusses VMware’s involvement in OpenStack, and reviews why running OpenStack on VMware is the best choice for deploying OpenStack today. It doesn’t hurt that VMware offers a single point of contact for deploying OpenStack on VMware using VIO, although VMware continues to partner with companies like Canonical, HP, SuSE, and Mirantis for OpenStack deployments as well. (HP announced yesterday that HP Helion will support vSphere and NSX.)
From there, Raghuram transitions to a discussion of traditional applications and next-generation applications. This leads to mention of support for 4 vCPUs with VMware Fault Tolerance in the vSphere 6 beta. (This expansion of support is a long time coming.) Cross-vCenter vMotion is also coming in vSphere 6, as well as long-distance vMotion (coast-to-coast vMotion mentioned as an example). Raghuram transitions to Fathi for a discussion of next-generation applications.
Fathi talks about the use of microservices as the basis for next-generation applications, which clearly indicates he will be talking about containers. Fathi paints containers as “having been around for years,” including pointing to a feature in Windows Data Center Server 15 years ago. However, Docker has clearly captured the attention of developers, and so Fathi talks about where Docker fits. This leads into the “containers without compromise” message, which means that running containers on VMs on VMware’s SDDC architecture is the best way to deliver containerized applications and microservices today. Fathi mentions VMware working closely with Docker and Kubernetes, and explains the concept of a Kubernetes pod as a collection of containers. The value that VMware offers in a Docker/Kubernetes environment includes persistent storage via VSAN, pod mobility via vMotion/DRS, enhanced security via the VM operational model, and the rich ecosystem of tools supporting VMware virtualized infrastructure. Fathi re-iterates that SDDC is a single platform for running traditional applications as well as next-generation applications, and reminds attendees that CloudFoundry has supported containers (via Warden) for a number of years. (In other words, containers are not new to VMware.) VMware announces today that VMware is working with Docker, Google, and Pivotal to make containers a “first-class” citizen in the VMware SDDC architecture.
This leads into a demo by Fathi showing the use of vCAC (vRealize Automation?) deploying a blueprint. The demo shows CoreOS and Kubernetes deploying Vulcan, which is a service registration/service discovery tool. Raghuram asks about Project Fargo, and Fathi talks about how Fargo can help make containers even better than on bare metal through the use of technologies like those in Project Fargo.
Next up, Raghuram talks about the vRealize suite of management applications and tools. vRealize will be available as an on-premises implementation as well as available via vCloud Air in a SaaS model. I think that the value of this second approach is possibly being overlooked by a good number of conference attendees, but it is quite a significant announcement in my humble opinion.
Fathi takes over again to discuss the need for policy in the SDDC architecture. Policy can (and should) be applied not only to networking, but also to storage, compute, and other areas. This leads into a demo, hosted within vCAC (vRealize Automation?), and shows how various policies like storage policies are implemented to affect how applications are deployed within an SDDC architecture. (There is, of course, another side of policy that isn’t being mentioned here, and that’s what Congress attempts to address. But that’s another story for another day.) There is a nice demo of integrations between vCAC and NSX, where vCAC creates NSX security groups (with associated firewall rules) on-demand as part of a blueprint. That’s nice, and will be quite useful I think.
Speaking of NSX, Fathi jumps into a discussion of microsegmentation as a key value-add for VMware NSX in data centers. While microsegmentation was possible before VMware NSX, the value that NSX offers is that microsegmentation now becomes more manageable and more operationally feasible than it’s been in the past. Fathi reminds the audience that this functionality can be driven by policy.
Raghuram summarizes the various demonstrations and announcements, and leaves the stage. Fathi then invites Simone Brunozzi, VP and Chief Technologist for Hybrid Cloud. Brunozzi uses his Google Glass as an excuse to show off a mobile application he uses to “check” on his data center. This leads into a demo that shows vCenter Operations Manager to show the health of vCloud Air resources as well as VMware NSX resources—this shows the expanding reach of vCenter Operations Manager and the tight integration between the various product lines that VMware is advancing. This leads into a demonstration of extending a network from your own data center into vCloud Air, and then migrating workloads (via a copy operation) to vCloud Air directly from within the vSphere Web Client. That’s nothing new, according to Fathi, but what is new is the coordination between firewall rules in NSX and firewall rules in vCloud Air to enable full connectivity between on-premises workloads and workloads in vCloud Air.
Brunozzi next demos using vSphere Replication to replicate to a cloud provider for cloud-based recovery. There was no mention I caught of which providers support this, though I’m sure that vCloud Air via Recovery-as-a-Service does.
At this point I needed to leave to get ready for a session, so I wasn’t able to capture the rest of the keynote. I hope that what I was able to capture was useful—feel free to share any corrections or additions in the comments below. Thanks!